It’s hard to believe that it has been a full year since the merger of the central and southern Indiana Goodwills. One of the primary motivations for the merger was the desire to increase the pace with which we could deliver mission services to southern Indiana.

In July, we opened The Excel Center^® in Clarksville. The school currently serves nearly 200 adults and will celebrate its first graduating class in June. Since 2011, more than 3,000 adults have earned a diploma at one of our 12 Excel Center locations. We will open our 13th location, in Muncie, this summer. The Excel Center has even been cited as part of Governor Holcomb’s 2018 strategy for developing Indiana’s workforce, a testament to the tremendous work being done by staff and students alike.

Nurse-Family Partnership^®, Goodwill’s nurse-home visitation program for first-time, low-income moms, expanded from six counties in 2016 to 30 in 2017, including the 11 counties we serve in southern Indiana. Nearly 2,400 families have been served by the program, which made more than 10,000 home visits in 2017 alone. As a result of the impact illustrated by Nurse-Family Partnership, the state of Indiana allocated funds in its budget for the program, allowing us to offer these life-changing services to even more families.

We’ve expanded our Guides program to southern Indiana, where Goodwill employees now have access to a life and career coach who will help them set and achieve goals for higher-wage employment. Our Disability Services team has also expanded its job coaching and career retention services to individuals in southern Indiana, creating a strong foundation for future growth. Overall, Goodwill placed 1,352 Hoosiers into jobs last year. This is in addition to the nearly 3,800 individuals we directly employ - more than half of whom have one or more barriers, including criminal history, disability or lack of a high school diploma.

None of this would be possible without the support of community stakeholders like the Lilly Endowment, whose generosity has allowed us to do so much in southern Indiana in such a short amount of time, as well as our financial contributors and the Hoosiers who shop and donate at our stores.

Thank you for supporting Goodwill’s mission.